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3/20/2012 @ 8:11PM43,021 views

He does so because this atrocity works on many levels. First, the average American does not know much about child soldiers. Most Americans do not read Foreign Policy or the Economist, let alone books on the subject, such as A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Child Soldier. Because the subject is relatively unknown, an earnest, Tebow-like savior like Russell is able to mark the atrocity as his own (as if he just discovered fire), and position himself as mission critical to a simplistic, mano-a-mano Great Man resolution. “I will do anything I can to stop him,” Russell says in Kony 2012, as if heroically offing one warlord would make the child soldier problem disappear. In fact, Jason-Come-Latelies like Russell have the audacity to claim, without irony, that child soldiers are “invisible” (thus, Invisible Children). Invisible, that is, until the Atrocity Tourist came along. Invisible, even though myriad organizations – Art for Children, Children Chance, Concerned Children and Youth Association, Concerned Parents Association, and Friends of Orphans — have been working overtime on the issue for years.

Moreoever, it’s important for an Atrocity Tourist like Russell to not only depict his chosen atrocity as statistically larger than others, but to depict his designated black bogeyman as the world’s worst. As the Kony 2012 Kool-Aid drinkers breathlessly repeat, “Joseph Kony is the number one ranked bad guy in the world!” Not number two or three. Number one. As in, “We’re Number One!” Like a top ranking in college football, the number one designation is crucial to Russell’s outreach to his own army of child activist soldiers. So are the inflated numbers for Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army. By most reliable estimates, Kony’s LRA has dwindled to a few hundred soldiers. But Russell and IC are still claiming that the LRA numbers in the tens of thousands. The bigger the bogeyman, the larger the donation?

Besides inflating the Kony threat, for IC to claim ownership of the atrocity, it also needs to discourage critical thinking and detachment, and, instead, quickly mobilize media consumers to impulsive action. You must poster Joseph Kony’s face everywhere, the video implores, especially on April 20 — Hitler’s birthday, by no coincidence — so that he will be caught or killed in 2012, with the aid of, ah, um, U.S. military stalking horses, er, ‘advisers’” (echoes of Vietnam and Iraq, anyone?) Forget books and magazines. Too slow, spy kids. This urgent mission requires the deployment of the viral juggernaut of social media and Internet TV to rally a passionate army of unquestioning lockstep youth activists.

As IC knows, if you lack the time or inkling to hypothesis test an Internet claim, let alone vett the credibility of those making the claim, then you are the perfect foil for the glossy, sentiment-soaked appeal that Kony 2012 artfully proffers. Moreover, a skilled manipulator like Russell knows that when a viewer is selectively informed, he or she is likely to manifest a visceral reaction when first exposed to the carefully presented atrocity, especially when the call to action has been shorn of all caveats and counter-claims that might reduce the viewer’s quicksilver emotional reaction. It’s the essence of documentary propaganda. It is how Michael Moore is able to elicit such a strong and automatic rush to judgment from his true believers: by carefully weeding out uncomfortable facts that muddy his populist message. Russell has learned well, and, in fact, admits that he deliberately “oversimplified on purpose” for maximum effect.

Film and TV people talk a lot about story, and not so much about messy, intricate policy detail. This makes them both perfect deliverers and recipients of the sensationalized rhetoric found in Kony 2012, and perfect agents in the film’s black-and-white social change narrative: “Africa is beautiful, but barbaric,” Russell, the former child missionary, implies, “that can only be saved from its worst instincts by noble and heroic westerners. Please give now.” Never mind that IC’s action kits are the pet rocks of the new millennium. Most Atrocity Tourists will find them buried in their garage ten years hence when they finally upgrade from their Palms two bedroom to their Malibu Barbie beach manse, so that Siri Jai and Maddox Apple are finally sequestered from the Trayvon Martins of the world.

So, kudos to the Kony Capitalist, Jason Russell. In Kony 2012, this master propagandist brilliantly tapped into the Atrocity Tourist hunger for new and graphic African horror, while giving Atrocity Tourists new and spendy ways to expiate their guilt and activate their western savior complex. As Russell demonstrates, anytime you can talk about an atrocity while invoking kids, you have solid gold. “OMG,” says the Atrocity Tourist, “that’s happening to kids?” The tourist is hooked. We must do something, Paul David (nee Bono). We must do something, Richard Melville (nee Moby). We must do something Martin, Susan, Tim, Harry, Bill, Brad, Bob, Ed, George, Matt, Jane, Mia, and Oprah (whose namesake foundation donated $2 million to Invisible Children).

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You are the definition of apathetic Mr. Crotty.I actually got a headache from reading your overly analyzed condemnation of a guy that was just trying to help,albeit it may have been ignorant on his part. If he did it the wrong way, excuse the hell out of him. I am so sick of snobs dissecting things down to their own over- reactionary standards…

Now that was some deep analysis there, sir. “Apathetic”? Far from it. See here: http://www.crottyskids.com.

Think global, act local, compadre.

Also, are all those folks who questioned whether the U.S. should be sending troops into Iraq to take out another of the world’s bad guys, Saddam Hussein, “snobs”? You need to think through the logic of the Kony 2012 argument, sir.

Nice plug for your filmmaking aspirations. The kids are very important & it is a good job highlighting their story,but the tone of your article is highly apathetic in that it seeks to socially exclude people from participating in the discourse- of rejecting your idea & by suggesting that taking part in activism,bleeding heart or not, makes you a target for ridicule by calling people names like Atrocity Tourists.Think about the children who are suffering because of this monster Kony. Isn’t it possible that maybe Russell was simply a man who naively thought he was doing a good thing.He made some poor editing choices for sure, but the symbology of what he did is correct.Call terrorists out & hold them accountable. Also, I am global & act local.I happen to work for a nonprofit organization that campaigns locally for global families by telling about their hardships, their hopes & their lives.We raise funds for them by helping to sell their arts & crafts locally.We also help our local communities out as well-we’ve been doing it for over 40 years & have a great track record & no I will not shamelessly plug them.So, taking action is important, for whatever cause you believe in.I really hope you are not trying to lump Iraq into this issue.No one is advocating that we send troops into Uganda,dismantle the regime & stay there for years.People needed to question that war & those who did are not snobs.Are you saying that Kony doesn’t need to be held accountable?That we should just ignore what happened & yes continues to happen? Do you know what Saddam Hussein did to people who did not do his bidding-should he have been left alone to murder anyone in his way?He should have been captured & put on trial & that is what happened.The argument for bringing both of those guys to justice is not lost on me-hold them accountable in a court of law this is the simple logic-no need to over think it.Do the same for all the other thugs as well.And it is madam to you, sir.

!. The bulk of the people who call for Kony’s head were probably against killing Saddam. I don’t think anyone would dispute that, even though Saddam was responsible for many more deaths than Kony. If you think intervention to kill Saddam and Kony are both justified, then at least you are consistent. I applaud your consistency. Because in a fundamental sense there is no difference between Kony and Saddam. Both killed people. Saddam more than Kony, of course. Both affected the lives of children in horrible ways. There is no bright line difference. So, again, you are in the late Christopher Hitchens camp. And I applaud your consistency, even though I am an anti-interventionist generally.

2. You miss the slippery slope argument I and others are making. Vietnam, as you might know, started with the U.S. sending in a few “advisors.” These are not innocuous events. That’s the big point here.

3. I am by no means apathetic. I have lived long enough to see how emotion-driven policy leads to very bad ends for this country. We are only now starting to come out of the deleterious effects of the emotion-driven rush to war in Iraq and Afghanistan, the emotion-driven build-up of the homeland security state post-9/11. The loss of freedom and the perpetuation of war is often engendered by those with the most pure of intentions.

Invisible Children is not the victim. IC has been criticised and warned before, they just didn’t listen. Using old footage to mislead an audience of the current situation in these African countries is blatantly wrong. Whether it be due to poor judgement, lack of research, etc it is not right.

If you are upset with the author, you might as well be upset with those of us who have dedicated our lives to humanitarian work because that is the way most feel. My hope is people will not see this as an attack. It isn’t, we are trying to share what is really going on and what the consequences of this type of campaign produce.

I take your criticism seriously, and I don’t think you are far from the truth in your analysis of Atrocity Tourists. I’m going to use this article, and the film itself, in my Lutheran high school youth group tonight, because I think it’s important for my students to sharpen their critical thinking skills. I haven’t read far back, so I apologize if this has been gone over. There are several interesting things going on here, naked rant notwithstanding: 1) Do we as a country, or persons in a country, have a right to intervene when we see people of any age being harmed without recourse to the law? It’s not a dumb question. Plenty of libertarians and liberals would say that we don’t and shouldn’t. But even if we see ourselves as the world’s policemen, when we decide to intervene, the world has a right to ask, “What’s your motive?” In Iraq, I think history will tell, that our rage over 9/11 needed a target. And the oil. Always the oil. I would ask Russell and IC the same question: what’s your motive? Other than an above-average salary for a non-profit, I would say that bringing the world’s public enemy #1 brought before the ICC is a pretty noble goal. 2) Would I have found out about this if it weren’t for the well-made film? No. The question then, is, does the ends justify the means? As a Christian, that answer is rarely “Yes.” As one of my kids said yesterday, “Eat the fish, spit out the bones.” Does IC have a bad track record when it comes to transparency, and amount spent in the actual cause for which they are raising funds? Yes. Will I send them money? No. Will I talk about this issue with my kids? Yes. Will I stop asking rhetorical questions? Never. My church just finished a 30 Hour Famine for World Vision. We raised over $4500, which should feed, educate and clothe 155 kids in Afghanistan for four months (or a year – depending on how much the US govt matches dollars). Are our Lutheran hearts big enough to feed kids and stop a madman? I think so. 3) The final statement I have is “consider the day when we will no longer even be Atrocity Tourists, but Atrocity Rubber-neckers. Tsk, too bad about those kids. Next. I pray the day never comes when atrocity becomes the new normal.

Tim, at least get the most informative movie, An Unconventional War by the Sentinel Group, to go with Russell’s movie. This is the best documentary on what really went on in Uganda and with Kony. Uganda’s president, the military leaders, the pastors, the families of children abducted and the child soldiers themselves are all interviewed. Kony’s atrocities are detailed by the people who know best and lived through it. http://sentinel.ctvportal.com/Home/LessonsFromAnUnconventionalWar/tabid/2610/Default.aspx

See tomorrow’s post in the Huffington Post. I will post the link at the end of this Forbes piece and in the Comments area. It was supposed to be published in Forbes on Wednesday, but they disallowed it (which they are fully within their rights to do, and I accept that). Stay tuned. And sorry for the delay. I was fully intending my solvency to appear immediately after my first post on the topic.